The Renovation Journey of a 1940’s ‘Traditional’ to 2015 ‘Contemporary, Green & Gorgeous’

Category Archives: Solar Energy

East Coast Radio are running a wonderful series on sustainability and eco issues with Kerry Dell. It is aired on Wednesdays at 09:00 pm. I was included to share our experiences around investing in Solar Energy. My intention is to help people think about this investment in a broader context, which includes the ROI! Here is the link:

Mainstream Renewable Power, a global wind and solar energy company, has released a research report which states that South Africa’s wind and solar power generation matches electricity demand in the country.

Mainstream analysed wind and solar resource data from 2013 for 18 wind and solar sites across South Africa.

“Not only are wind and solar power cheaper than new fossil fuel generation here in South Africa, but when combined, they can make a significant contribution to baseload power at the time of day it is most needed,” he said.

The graph below shows the country’s wind and solar hourly generation profile, and the 2008 national demand profile.

Busting a major renewable energy myth

Penny-Jane Cooke, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said this researchis significant in busting a big renewable energy myth.

“This research effectively busts one of the biggest myths created by the anti-renewables lobby: that we require coal and nuclear generation to provide for baseload demand as renewable energy sources cannot meet this demand,” she said.

She said what is interesting about this research is that this phenomenon does not occur everywhere in the world.

“This means that South Africa is in a unique position to make the most of renewable energy.”

“Contrary to what has been argued about how renewable energy is not available when it is most needed, in South Africa the sun shines and the wind blows when electricity is most needed.”

“This should be enough of a reason to remove the barriers to renewable energy immediately – it’s not rocket science.”

Government mandated power outages for South Africans are to be part of our lives for many years to come. As we complain and our economy suffers one might think that many people and organisations of reasonable means are installing solar systems. This is not so.

Barriers to entry are certainly perceived high cost, but also general lack of knowledge of how these systems work.

One of the frequently asked questions about The Gorgeous Green House is ‘how much did your solar system cost’?

I’ve learned that if I answer the question directly people’s eyes tend to glaze over and they mentally check out of the conversation. I wish to challenge people to think differently about the subject as it may lead to a different set of conclusions (and hopefully actions!). So I now answer that question with the following questions:

Do you know what you are currently paying for electricity? (you would be surprised at how many people can’t answer this question)

Do you know what increases are on the cards going forward?

Have you drawn up a spreadsheet to really get to grips with what you will be spending over the next few years?

We did this exercise, and based on our rather shocking, (but not unusual) $200.00 (aprox. R2000.00) per month electricity bill, we projected our forward costs based on the 12.2% increase that we experienced this year and the 25% increase that ESKOM are asking for. As we have installed, these costs are now savings.

This is what it looks like in South African Rands (divide by 10 for a rough conversion to American dollars):

Old (Non-eco) House Electricity Account:

Aprox 2 000.00 per month

12.2 % Annual Increase

Accumulative Saving

25% Annual Increase

Accumulative Saving

2014

24 000.00

24 000.00

2015

26 880.00

50 880.00

30 000.00

54 000.00

2016

30 105.56

80 985.56

37 500.00

91500.00

2017

33 337.48

114 323.04

46 875.00

138 375.00

2018

37 899.46

152 222.50

58 593.75

196 968.75

2019

42 523.19

194 745.69

Like us, you may be rather shocked at how much you will be spending on electricity over the next few years. The reality is, however, that South African’s have benefited from relatively low rates compared to the rest of the world and on that score we have little to complain about.

Medupi Coal Station. As unattractive as it is unhealthy.

Our government’s solution to our energy crises is the building of even more filthy, polluting coal powered stations and extremely controversial nuclear stations. The science shows us that with some political will and sensible interventions we can avoid these options with healthy, earth affirming renewable energy systems. Starting at home seems like a good place to begin.

If you do you sums as above the next step would be to consult a reputable solar provider for a quote. You may be very surprised at the ROI time frame. Ours will be somewhere between 4 and 5 years. If your quote to go ‘off grid’ is not possible, why not start smaller. You can add to and expand your system very easily as your means allow. In the meantime at least benefit from avoiding the incessant power failures!

We plan to be in our house for many years so relatively soon we will be scoring financially and using electricity in a way that serves our concern for the health of the planet!

In addition, we continue to lobby our authorities to implement systems to pay small scale electricity generators for their excess electricity as this will offer further incentive to others to get on board. Watch this space!

It has been a fantastic week of media exposure for the Gorgeous Green House. Lindsay Ord has written up our story and shows how living green can be much more accessible than many people realize. If you missed the article in your local paper you can see the online IOL version HERE.

South Africa’s current energy crises resulting in up to 6 hours of blackouts (the term load shedding is misleading) on any given day has everyone’s attention.

In this post I would like to focus on one opportunity that is not yet getting traction in our country but has been fairly commonplace in developed countries around the world for several decades.

Net Metering is a fairly simple idea: it is generally an arrangement with a service provider whereby excess electricity generated by a customer who has installed their own solar/wind/other electricity generating technology is used to offset electric energy provided by the electric utility to the electric consumer during the applicable billing period.

For example, this system has enabled German citizens to build and own nearly half of all the wind turbines, solar PV, and biogas plants in the country. Individual German citizens—not their utility companies–have invested more than $100 billion in renewable energy. They have done so because they are paid a fair price for their electricity and because they can install the size, type, and amount of renewables that is the most economic for them and the best fit for their communities. energyblog.nationalgeographic.com

This model appears to be a ‘no-brainer’ in its potential to incentivise property owners who can easily calculate a faster return on an investment in alternative energy while contributing to a greener planet. A document recently released by NERSA (National Energy Regulator South Africa) has pointed out:

MECHANISMS should be developed to allow the integration of electricity generation by solar panels on residential, commercial and industrial buildings into the power grid.

Nersa’s document comes during what it says has been a great increase over the past year in the number of private rooftop photovoltaic (solar) panels installed on residential and commercial/ industrial premises at the cost of the owners. These are connected to the grid and could feed surplus power back into it.

The owners of a number of rooftop grid-tied solar systems have agreements with municipalities on net-metering, which sets off the electricity consumed with the surplus electricity supplied to the grid. The Gorgeous Green House has signed such an agreement with our local municipality but are yet to see any credit for surplus electricity. The Mercury Newspaper and IOL have been covering aspects of this story and approached eThekwini for comment as to why the process has not been implemented. The full story can be accessed here. Leshan Moddliar from eThewini’s response was:

“Currently, the municipality is not ideally structured to remunerate renewable small scale embedded generation, as processes are designed to buy power from Eskom and supply customers. When a customer wants to generate electricity, power is now flowing in the reverse direction and it does pose a challenge to integrate to current systems.”

One can’t help wondering why this ‘structuring’ is taking so long to sort out. We signed our Power Purchase Agreement in October 2013. Perhaps the real reason is as the NERSA document points out:

“The widespread installation of rooftop solar panels, which is also referred to as embedded generation or distributed generation, poses a real threat to municipal and Eskom revenues,”

My follow up questions for Leshan are as follows:

What has eThekwini/NERSA/ESKOM been doing in the last few years to address the structural issues that are preventing the implementation of our PPA?

Why is it that other municipalities have pilot projects running and NERSA are not inhibiting them?

What is eThekwini/NERSA/ESKOM doing to learn from these models and other successful projects around the world?

To what extent is eThekwini prioritising this opportunity in light of the energy crises?

What are you time lines?

What is your comment in terms of the NERSA document (quote above). Is it possible your reluctance to move these projects forward is because it poses a threat to your revenues?

Unfortunately, several e-mails and messages left for Leshan have elicited no response.

This post is somewhat later than it should be but I have the best excuse! We’ve been sharing this beautiful space with our overseas family (10 in all) for 6 weeks and have been incredibly busy chilling, having lots of fun and feasts and just joyfully hanging out.

A good test for a home is a lot of visitors for a protracted amount of time and I am thrilled to report that the GGH works beautifully. The kitchen and open space living area flows brilliantly and dozens of meals were seamlessly put together without bodies bumping into each other.

Thanks to our super efficient solar system we were blissfully unaware that Eskom (SA’s only power utility) gifted South Africans with numerous power outages during this time. We remained switched on, connected and cooking!

The natural swimming pool coped with the daily invasion of overheated, sunscreen coated humans and the fish, shrimp crabs, plants and birds seem no worse for wear for sharing ‘their’ space with us.

The large covered veranda is perfect for our African climate. It coped with many for several big celebrations (including Christmas Day) and all meals were enjoyed al fresco. This has been our first chance to soak up the beautiful garden within which, to date, we’ve enjoyed whilst hard at labour rather than relaxation!

The veggie garden, although not properly planted as yet, provided an abundance of deliciousness and a foretelling of how are food lives will be in ‘normal’ mode.

In celebration of the finishing of the house I thought it would be fun to document the journey with ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘now’ images. At the beginning of this journey I wrote on my ‘About’ page that part of OUR MISSION was to provide:

…inspiration, information and motivation to others to follow suit. We wish to de-bunk myths such as ‘green is ugly’…….

Several years ago when I started talking about my dream of building a ‘green house’ a friend said “oh I saw one of those … a kind of hobbit house…really ugly”. So the first misconception to clear up is that green design has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the house! Whatever your taste (hobbit-like or otherwise) one can incorporate green design principles. Essentially it means building in harmony with the natural environment and cooperating instead of fighting with the regional climate.

Now we are at the end of the project (at least the building part) I do so hope that these images represent a realization of that early goal. I look forward to your feedback.

Front View ‘Before’

Front View ‘During’

Front View ‘Now’

Back View LHS ‘Before’

Back View LHS During

Back View LHS ‘Now’

Entertainment/barbecue Area ‘Before’

Entertainment/barbecue Area ‘Now”

Pool ‘Before’

At the commence of the build the pool became a pond.

Reshaping The Pool Area

Constructing the Reed Beds to Filter the Pool

Finished result. A beautiful green and healthy place for us to play and relax for years to come. Click HERE for more details.